Talk:Chess

We've got that large tabley thing set up in the conventions (It might be better placed under the board set up section). However that table would be a real headache to use repeatedly (its huge HTML code). The best solution I've seen yet is that chess board tex markup from wikisophia (see it here: http://wikisophia.org/wiki/Wikitex#Chess). However from my simple little tests that isn't supported yet here.

So for standard representation of chess boards, for now I recommend we just stick to simple to complex Ascii diagrams, using PNBRKQ/pnbrkq for black and white respectively. That should do until that sweet sweet wikitex project becomes more standard in the wikiworld.


 * I hope you're not referring to algebraic notation, the virtual lingua franca of chess notation. Fine for ASCII showing the boards or whatever, but its important to teach writing chess as well... Dysprosia 03:59, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * Why is uppercase for Black and lowercase for White? The standard convention is the opposite, e.g. Forsyth-Edwards_Notation. --68.122.41.19 18:55, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

No (that former post was mine), the tex markup, just lets a tex backend generate a diagram of the chess set up. A very very nice looking diagram. As we'll it labels the move history, so its ideal for transcribing chess games. WarrenWilkinson 21:53, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * Problem is it uses long algebraic, not short! :C I like the rendering, but it means I have to sit there and by sight transcribe famous games if I want them to be rendered by WikiTeX! Dysprosia 22:22, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * WikiTeX now supports SAN and PGN in addition to algebraic. Peter Danenberg 11:28, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm still not entirely sure what you mean. Do you mean it uses the notation like QP2-QP4, instead of like e4-e6? Or are you against having to reproduce a chess match in part to display a picture of the certain result? WarrenWilkinson 03:33, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * long - b1-c3, short - Nc3. The Wikisophia Chess markup handles moves only in long algebraic, and not short which all game records use, so in order to use the Wikisophia markup to show a game it has to be translated into long algebraic first which is a pain - the \move or \ply commands only does b1c3, for example. Dysprosia 03:56, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)

(Brainstorming) How about a special moves section that details moves like castling and en passant and where they apply. Possibly also mention non-standard chess pieces and chess problems? -- Emperorbma 19:12, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I was just thinking where to slot it in... Dysprosia 20:59, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I didn't know there were non-standard chess pieces. Do you mean chess varients? Or do other places play standard Chess with an alternate piece set? If its the former a section on chess varients may be appropriate, if the latter we should try to slot them into the actual document. Does anyone here know the names of different Chess notations? I'd like to include them, currently I've added the relative position, for lack of a better name, it looks like this


 * 1. QN1-QB3, ...  (1. B1-C3) (Queens Night to Bishop 3)

I've added that under the topic 'Alternate' Notation. Does anyone know its name, and/or the names of other notations?WarrenWilkinson 03:17, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * That's a European style notation, and is really rather ancient, and not many use it any more. Should we really include it here? (I'll find the name, in any case). There aren't really nonstandard chess pieces, but in chess variants you can have these. Dysprosia 11:46, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * Non-standard chess pieces... aka Fairy chess pieces. -- Emperorbma 07:40, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The alternate notation is called 'Descriptive Notation' and although it is not used much anymore it is worth knowing because there are a few books written in it which are worth reading (e.g. Irving Chernev's "The Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever Played").

Organizing the book
Hi, the chess book has been growing for a while, and it covers enough content to think about splitting it into several sub-pages. There are various ways of doing this, as discussed in Hierarchy naming scheme. I would recommend having only a short introduction on the main page of chess, and a table of contents like Chess Chess/Conventions Chess/Basics Chess/Playing The Game Chess/Notating The Game and so on. Avoid having red links or very short pages. A couple of chapters should be enough. Using subpages, each page gets an automatic link back to the main chess page. Have a look at Hamster Care or How To Build A Computer how it is done there, or look at the recent conversions User talk:Ojmorales0002 or Talk:How To Build A Computer. Let me know if you need help or if there are questions. --Andreas 11:53, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There is a section called 'Notating The Game'. Could it be renamed to 'Annotating The Game' because notating is not a real word, and the correct word is annotating -- CRF - Chessplayer
 * No, we can't. "Notating" is in fact a real word. However, you're right in that "Notating" is not the correct term, but "annotating" refers to making comments about the moves played in the game, giving variations, evaluating positions, etc. The correct term is "scoring".

--Anonymouse--nerd and proud of it (talk) 11:52, 23 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I was just going to suggest that but I see you were faster. :) I would break it using the existing top level headings:

Chess Chess/Basics Chess/Playing The Game Chess/Notating The Game Chess/Tactics Chess/Strategy Chess/Basic Openings Chess/The Endgame
 * --ZeroOne 20:30, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * I have split the book into the heading listed above. This should allow for quicker load times and easier editing. Darvian 20 Apr 2005


 * The current one is:

Playing The Game Notating The Game Tactics Tactics Exercises Strategy Basic Openings Sample chess game The Endgame Variants Tournaments Puzzles Optional homework
 * Chess/Basics, and Chess/Conventions got deleted.
 * Chess got removed because it is the title of the page.

Maybe use template?
What do you think of using the template for chess boards (borrowed from the English Wikipedia), instead of the long table? Here is an example of its use, along with the old style:

New:

They produce, respectively:
 * – ABCD 17:52, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * There is a nice project going on for a cross-wiki Chess diagram template. See meta:WikiProject_Chess for details.  I've copied the new "standard" template from Commons to WikiBooks.  The template is called Chess_diagram, and here's what it looks like:


 * If there are no objections, I'd like to start using this template to clean up the Chess WikiBook. Bjimba 14:59, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Chess variants
There is a VfD discussion that has an impact on this Wikibook at the moment. Don't worry, we are not trying to delete this Wikibook, but there is a Wikibook that appears to be a chess variant, and perhaps its content could be modified and adapted to be included in this Wikibook. See Votes for deletion for further details. The point here is that this Wikibook is inappropriate if left alone, but my opinion is that it should be included in this Wikibook. If you (any reader who gets to this point) feel it perhaps should go elsewhere, speak your mind on the VfD page or "forever hold your peace". If there are any active participants on this Wikibook, I would invite you to join in the discussion. --Rob Horning 10:42, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Important notice
The Chess wikibook had separate chapters called Basic Openings and Opening Theory. The Opening Theory module covered the same broad subject as Basic Openings but using a significantly different approach. While Basic Openings was a linear chapter, Opening Theory aimed to be an opening explorer along the lines of this web site. In addition, Basic Openings was... basic, while Opening Theory had a theoretically unlimited depth.

I have made the former Opening Theory chapter of the Chess wikibook into a separate wikibook, called 'Opening theory in chess'.

My reasons for doing this centre on the fact that the Chess wikibook is meant to a) reach 100% completion eventually and b) be something that a reader can get through from cover to cover and which will provide a working knowledge of the basics of chess. The Opening Theory chapter was inconsistent with this because:


 * Opening theory dwarfs the rest of chess literature. One needs only to look at the typical bookstall at a chess tournament to see this. It would take a long time and a lot of effort to create the definitive guide to chess openings, which would retard the completion of the Chess wikibook as a whole. Indeed, Chess is nearing completion, while Opening theory in chess is close to 0%.
 * The Opening Theory chapter was intended to be open-ended and constantly evolving in breadth and depth, like the Cookbook, with the result that Chess could never be 100% complete. Better, to my mind, to have one complete and readable book with a link to another constantly evolving one 'for further information'.
 * The concepts behind opening theory get complicated and potentially off-putting to someone who simply wants to know a bit about chess.

I believe this complies with Wikibooks' no-forking policy because:
 * The approaches used by the two books are completely different
 * The content itself differs in scope and depth
 * The minimal actual duplication of material is for the greater good of Wikibooks as I have explained above.

Chi Sigma 10:18, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Transwiki
If any one is till paying attenetoin, Transwiki:Sample chess game 141.156.219.89 21:03, 22 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I took care of it in July. ZeroOne 22:55, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Chess puzzles for one and all
I am preparing a set of chess puzzles from actual games and published problems for my students in a real-life chess class. I have decided to use the Wiki software to make the chess diagrams.

The puzzles, with solutions given on a separate page, are available on my userpage. At some later time, I intend to copy them into the chess book. If anyone wishes to do it immediately, I have no objection, as long as I can keep the original copy in my userspace.

I hope everyone who wants to try the puzzles will enjoy them. Shalom (talk) 02:59, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Checking them out ChessCreator (talk) 16:22, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I am copying them into the chess book page. If anyone wishes to remove them, I won't object. Shalom Yechiel (talk) 15:09, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

New Wikibook
The endgame section isn't really finished yet, but I still think that endgames are complex enough that they deserve to be a seperate wikibook, like Chess Opening Theory. AltoStev (discuss • contribs) 13:44, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Intro

 * 1) This introduction is about history.
 * 2) Wikipedia has a much better (or more detailed) introduction right now. Maybe some details could be added.
 * 3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Chess#Chess_origin quote "My purpose was indeed to say that the origin of chess is a very controversial issue, that several places have serious claims, India, Persia, China, Central Asia, explaining why. The story is much more complex than saying chess is born in India or in China or anywhere full stop"
 * 4) So the sentence saying that it comes from India (full stop) should be changed or expanded somehow
 * 5) "Chess Update Log" by Ilyx (on youtube) also has a nice history-ish introduction

AltoStev (discuss • contribs) 16:15, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

New variant wikibook?
I feel like the current pages on chess variants here on Wikibooks are somewhat lacking in nature, so I would like to start work on a separate "Chess Variants" wikibook if that's cool. – Itswikisam (t • c) 02:37, 6 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Since no-one has responded, I will assume everyone is okay with it. – Itswikisam (t • c) 01:57, 14 June 2022 (UTC)